Carrie Underwood: STORYTELLER Media Blitz

If you’re a Country/Pop fan Friday 23rd October 2015 was officially 
CARRIE UNDERWOOD DAY!

We take a look at the album roll out  #Media Blitz!

Yes 19 Recordings/ARISTA Nashville’s Carrie Underwood released STORYTELLER (Columbia), her fifth studio album on Global Release Day.

For those that simply couldn’t wait a few hours, a virtual album bookcase went live, offering previews of the entire album.

You could: Choose A Book from The Shelf to Listen, plus, look for “View More” buttons inside some of the books linking to additional content! - storytelleralbum.com

OK, Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first! 
Here are the ways to purchase the album, Click on Graphic above or:

Amazon UK CD – Amazon UK MP3 - UK iTunes - Amazon.com

** Smart Choice Music ** (US Exclusive Deluxe) Target Store Product (Deluxe)

Storyteller
hits the shelves in HMV!

In addition to the October 23 digital and CD release of Storyteller, a limited-edition version of the album will be released on 150-gram vinyl on December 4. 

The vinyl edition will also include special etched artwork featuring Carrie’s name and the album name on one side of the two-LP set.  The vinyl edition is currently available for pre-order at Amazon.com

CARRIE is offering fans an added bonus when purchasing the album.

Any purchase of "Storyteller" made >> online << will include a code to purchase pre-sale tickets for her forthcoming 2016 tour. Complete tour details will be announced in coming days. For more information, head over to UNDERWOOD's website.

If you’re a Carrie Underwood super-fan, you needed to clear out some space on your DVR! 

The season 4 American Idol 2005 champ kicked off a media blitz behind her new album Storyteller on the day of the release.

She performed "Choctaw County Affair" outdoors Friday morning (Oct 23) on NBC’s Today show - Twitter Photo

She planned to tell a whole new tale and a performance to light up the TODAY plaza (Photo) for the Citi Concert Series!

Over the weekend, the new mummy was slated to take over CMT, with special episodes of CMT Instant Jam, CMT Crossroads and a co-hosting gig on CMT Hot 20.

Tuesday (Oct 276) she sits down with both Ellen and Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Not only will the following week find Carrie hosting the CMA Awards (Wednesday November 4th at 8p (ET) on ABC-TV) with Brad Paisley, she’ll also flex her vocal chords on Countdown to the CMA Awards: Country’s Greatest Crossover Hits with Robin Roberts on that Monday evening, before guesting on The Late Late Show with James Corden on CBS later that night.

She closes out her TV takeover as a guest judge on Project Runway’s season finale November 5 on Lifetime.

Target released two videos of Carrie performing songs that are available on the special Target edition of the album:
Target Store Product

A stripped version of 
>> “Heartbeat” and 
>> “Little Girl Don’t Grow Up Too Fast”.

Just Wow! She certainly hit the bullseye wearing a red and black beaded mini-dress with sheer panels!

STREAM THE ALBUM IN FULL

• Apple Music (first 3 months FREE if you sign up, then £9.99/ month). Open you iTunes application, Select “New”, Enter “Carrie Underwood” in Search
• Stream in full on SPOTIFY

If you have Spotify Installed & the application open listen here:

Our Top Tracks:

Like I'll Never Love You Again (** Best Track), The Girl You Think I Am, Heartbeat, Smoke Break, What I Never Knew I Always Wanted.

Carrie Underwood opened up about her new Target exclusive single >> YouTube

Storyteller was produced by Jay Joyce, Mark Bright, and Zach Crowell with six of its 13 songs co-written by Carrie, including the record-breaking first single, “Smoke Break.”

A complete track listing, with writer and producer credits, is as follows:

Storyteller

1. “Renegade Runaway” (Carrie Underwood/Chris DeStefano/Hillary Lindsey) Rock/ Country

2. “Dirty Laundry” (Zach Crowell/Ashley Gorley/Hillary Lindsey) Country/Rock

3. “Church Bells” (Zach Crowell/Brett James/Hillary Lindsey) Country/Rock

4. “Heartbeat” (Carrie Underwood/Zach Crowell/Ashley Gorley) Country/Pop

5. “Smoke Break” (Carrie Underwood/Chris DeStefano/Hillary Lindsey) Country/Rock

6. “Choctaw County Affair” (Jason White) Rock

7. “Like I’ll Never Love You Again” (Hillary Lindsey/Lori McKenna/Liz Rose) Country/ Ballad x

8. “Chaser” (Carrie Underwood/Mike Elizondo/Hillary Lindsey) Arena pop/EDM

9. “Relapse” (Ben Caver/Sara Haze/Brett James) Pop/ Rock

10. “Clock Don’t Stop” (Blair Daly/Chris DeStefano/Hillary Lindsey) Pop

11. “The Girl You Think I Am” (Carrie Underwood/David Hodges/Hillary Lindsey) Country x

12. “Mexico” (Kathleen Higgins/Jamie Moore/Derrick Adam Southerland) Rock

13. “What I Never Knew I Always Wanted” (Carrie Underwood/Brett James/Hillary Lindsey) Country x

Tracks 1, 2, 5-8 produced by Jay Joyce

Tracks 3, 10-13 produced by Mark Bright

Tracks 4, 9 produced by Zach Crowell

"Storyteller" Carrie Underwood Explained Why "Choctaw County Affair" Was Her Album's First Tale

Carrie Underwood admitted to ABC News that when she started working on her new record after giving birth to son Isaiah almost eight months ago, the direction she would take wasn’t immediately apparent. But once she found the song “Choctaw County Affair,” the album started taking shape.

“There was just something so, like it was simple but it was like swampy and twangy and it was a story and there was just something laid back and cool about it. That was kind of the door opener,” she recalled. “So it was like, this is our direction, here we go!”

Another important ingredient in the making of Storyteller was producer Jay Joyce, known for his work with Eric Church, Little Big Town and Emmylou Harris, among others. Carrie believes recording with him helped her grow, because his approach is very different than hers. 

“[Working with him is] a little more unpredictable, and I am honestly in life not good with unpredictability. I like schedules, I like rules, I like knowing what’s gonna happen...” she confessed. “So it was really something I needed to do, I think, working with him. And he’s just so creative, just does things in such a different way that I needed that to just get out of my routine.”

In the end, Carrie was confident you’ll hear her progress in the finished record. “As a whole, I feel like it ended up being just a little more traditional, I guess. And a little more laid back,” she muses, “but it still had a little bit of a rock edge sometimes and a little bit of an R&B edge sometimes, and it all works together.”

Ultimately, Carrie said “Choctaw County Affair” even influenced the album’s cover.

Carrie Underwood‘s Storyteller is less dramatic than previous albums, but that doesn’t means it’s without drama. “Church Bells” is a mini-movie that one imagines as a music video along the lines of “Two Black Cadillacs.”

The singer recently told Taste Of Country about song No. 3 on the album, a track she describes as “Fancy’s little sister,” referring to Reba McEntire‘s “Fancy.”

“She’s young, she’s pretty, she’s poor, doing what she can to survive,” Underwood explains in the video above, describing her “Church Bells” heroine. “(She) Meets a man that has a lot of wealth and is supposed to take care of her.”

The guy ends up being a jerk, and things get very ugly, very quickly. The church bells represent different things at different points in the song.

“She could hear those church bells ringing, ringing / And up in the loft that whole choir singing, singing / Fold your hands and close your eyes / Yeah it’s all gonna be alright / Just listen to the church bells ringing, ringing.” - Read More: Carrie Underwood's 'Church Bells' Is 'Fancy's Little Sister'  

STORYTELLER the REVIEWS

Carrie Underwood - STORYTELLER

Allmusic (Rating: 4 STARS) …the title isn't a feint; she spends a good chunk of the album reiterating, singing about heartbreak, hair triggers, red wine, dirty laundry, and smoke breaks, the mundane details that turn life so joyous and tragic. Subtlety isn't Underwood's strong suit so the songs tend to be a bit on the nose, whether she's pledging devotion to her newborn son on the sweet closer "What I Never Knew I Always Wanted" or streamlining Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe" via the stomping "Choctaw County Affair," but that directness is key to her appeal: there are no greys in Carrie's music, only blazing primary colors. ..She is, as she says in her album title, a Storyteller, and there's an unmistakable distance between her theatrics and the subjects of her tunes; she isn't living these songs, she's performing them. Like a skilled actor, Underwood chooses her roles wisely -- she's comfortable swaggering through the leadoff pair of "Renegade Runaway" and "Dirty Laundry," while she eases into the comforting melancholy of "The Girl You Think I Am" -- and she knows how to deliver the essence of each song, modulating her performances not only so they match the grand productions but so they always are the focal point. That's no small feat and Storyteller is no small album: it demands attention and it deserves it, too.

EW.com (Rating: A-) ….Underwood still retains an essential part of the sweet Checotah, Okla., farm girl Idol viewers watched blossom on stage 10 years ago. Aside from her powerhouse voice, it’s possibly the most defining thing about her.

Storyteller Photoshoot
Credit: RANDEE ST NICHOLAS

Her music is faultlessly personable if not exactly personal—unusual in a genre that builds superstars in part by deliberately blurring the lines between public and private....And even when she doesn’t pen these tales she knows how to sell them, whether she’s coolly dismantling a two-timing man on the tart kiss-off “Dirty Laundry,” playing Mississippi Bonnie to her Clyde on roadhouse stomper “Choctaw County Affair,” or boomeranging back to a bad romance on the fevered “Relapse.” Unlike Nashville’s most notable recent defector, Underwood isn’t making any sudden Swift-ian shift toward pop. She’s always had rock in her DNA...Jesus also takes the wheel less often, or at least less explicitly, than on her previous releases (even the twangy roof-raiser “Church Bells” contains at least four of the seven deadly sins). Story may not tell listeners much about Underwood’s inner life, but she’s never owed or offered that. She makes good songs sound great, and that’s enough.

NY Times (Rating 50/100) ‘Storyteller’ Values Power Over Finesse: At the country vocal Olympics, she’s a gold medalist. She had a victorious turn scream-singing on “American Idol” and has extended it into a victorious scream-singing career in Nashville, in which she has sold approximately 15 million albums, been inducted into the Grand Ole Opry and acted as the longtime co-host (with Brad Paisley) of the Country Music Association Awards. All she’s missing is the one thing Ms. Swift and Ms. Lambert have down cold: a fixed identity. “Storyteller” is her fifth album, and even though a decade has passed since her debut, Ms. Underwood is still preoccupied with power, not texture or finesse. She largely picks songs that serve as launch platforms for her ballistic-missile voice, but they don’t cohere into a whole identity....If Ms. Underwood has developed a thematic specialty, it’s the woman-done-wrong anthem. The ones on this album are some of the better songs here. “Dirty Laundry” finds her catching her man in lies, and “Church Bells” is a worthy addition to country’s proud line of songs about domestic violence:

Exclaim.ca  (Rating 6/10) ...But, too often, it is more than halfway boring. It isn't uninspired or weakly performed. Rather, it is boring in spite of the overwhelming bombast, the booming bass and pounding drums, the huge vocals, the wailing guitars; it is boring because rather than electrifying you, it distances and anaesthetizes. I was on my third listen to this record before I found the energy to pierce the sheen, to get at the songs underneath. The good news is that those songs are, most of them anyway, pretty great. The leadoff single "Smoke Break" offers an incisive look at small town America ala Miranda Lambert or Kacey Musgraves, and rides a clever lyrical turn through a satisfying chorus. "Chaser," a gorgeous melody lifted even higher by an irresistible rush-drag vocal line (and a soulful performance), is destined to be sung into hairbrushes in front of mirrors for years to come. But the best track on the album is "Relapse," a tangle of ideas about addiction, love and sex that features a moving, tension-breaking chorus that you'll want to hear on repeat.

Boston Globe (Rating 8/10) ..On “Storyteller” she embraces even more, co-writing and choosing a clutch of tracks that chronicle tales of deadly romantic triangles, the perils of social climbing, cheatin’ hearts, and familial bliss, alongside more

typical love songs. That she chooses to tell these stories in her usual fashion — employing quieter verses and belting out anthemic choruses — doesn’t obscure the growth on

Storyteller Photoshoot
Credit: RANDEE ST NICHOLAS

display...No doubt some of the evolution results from Underwood expanding her collaborative base, chiefly to include producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Little Big Town). 
Joyce brings his atmospheric touch to the album’s best six tracks, including the one-two punch of ominous opener “Renegade Runaway,” a nervy rocker with a Wild West motif — and deliciously dark revenge number “Dirty Laundry,” in which the narrator threatens to hang her unfaithful partner’s shirt out to dry — with the wrong shade of lipstick on the collar — for everyone to see...There’s plenty on “Storyteller” that will sound familiar to Underwood fans, and a few filler tracks. But a little stretching goes a long way, and this might be her most interesting album yet.  ESSENTIAL “Dirty Laundry”

For The Country Record (Rating: Positive) …Storyteller is arguably Underwood’s strongest overall record. Musically it’s very innovative, incorporating influences from a variety of genres, but despite that it feels very much rooted in country. That’s thanks mainly to Underwood’s voice and the stories themselves. It’s a lesson many of her peers could stand to take to heart: how to incorporate other influences while still remaining true to country music. The stories and characters on this album are incredibly well fleshed-out, and there are no glaring plot holes. Sure, some songs are stronger than others, but everything feels like it has a place here…

PROMOTION

On Thursday October 22^nd she talked it up on The Elvis Duran Z100 Morning Radio Show in New York.

Image

BACKSTAGE IN THE OPRY LOUNGE

Carrie Underwood talked about her new album Storyteller, and revealed the story behind a few tracks on the album including her hit song "Smoke Break" published on Oct 23, 2015:

IHEARTCOUNTRY ALBUM RELEASE PARTY

Carrie Underwood took a smoke break backstage with Paul Costabile for an >> interview

She gave an exclusive performance at the iHeartRadio Theater presented by P.C. Richard & Son on Thursday, October 22nd in NYC

AMERICA’S MORNING SHOW

Carrie paid a visit at the NASH campus to talk “Storyteller” and what baby Isaiah will be for HALLOWEEN.

For the full interview, visit the show’s website or listen to the audio on Soundcloud

NEW YORK CITY OFFICIALLY WENT COUNTRY

The 19 Recordings/Arista Nashville artist appeared on NBC-TV's "The TODAY Show" (Fri Oct 23rd) to discuss her life as a mother, her new album and the news of a forthcoming 2016 tour. Carrie performed her new single, "Smoke Break," for the TODAY Plaza for the CITI Concert Series. 
Check out the photos and performances here.

Carrie Underwood at rehearsal for her TODAY appearance

Setlist for our Citi Concert Series:
Before He Cheats , Smoke Break, Choctaw Country Affair, Blown Away

She kicked off with Before He Leaves and followed that with Smoke Break, Choctaw County Affair and Blown away before signing off.

The Grammy Award-winner glittered in a jacket covered in black, silver and copper beads and sequins in geometric and swirling patterns worn over a black beaded cardigan, a black vest, black leggings and black high-heeled pumps.

With her long blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders, the hitmaker, who is the face of skincare range Almay, highlighted her eyes with liner and mascara and wore pale pink lipstick. Read more: Daily Mail

Thx @CarrieUnderwood for a very happy Friday - Tweet

There are NO words....#CarrieToday #Storyteller - Tweet

There appeared to be concerned look on Carrie's face (Image) whilst she watched Adele’s comeback and brand new video 'Hello' (released the same day on iTunes) from forthcoming album "25" which also delighted her worldwide army of fans.

Carrie launches 'Storyteller' on Voice of America (Entertainment News)

UP CLOSE & PERSONAL

Carrie was a guest on Up Close & Personal, exclusively aired on Today’s Best Country!

Carrie spoke about living a “normal” life in Nashville, which is great for her family, how she came up with the album name “Storyteller”, the fun telling a story in song and how it can connect to her fans and told them about Smoke Break and how she loves to tell stories of strong women. She spoke about country music outside of America playing In London and the C2C Country to Country Festival.

Posted on October 23, 2015:

TWEETS

Carrie tweeted Good morning boys and girls! We're up bright and early for the @TODAYshow sleepy but excited!!! Now, somebody pass me the coffee!!! - Instagram Photo

Carrie tweeted Today's the day! #Storyteller selfie #newmusic #happyfriday -

Today's the day! #Storyteller selfie #newmusic #happyfriday pic.twitter.com/vJtMlS58im

— Carrie Underwood (@carrieunderwood) October 23, 2015

Carrie tweeted Oh, just hanging out @Target picking up some new music! #tradition #Storyteller

Oh, just hanging out @Target picking up some new music! #tradition #Storyteller pic.twitter.com/QJxtvKMtkW

— Carrie Underwood (@carrieunderwood) October 23, 2015

MAGAZINES

November 2, 2015  
Carrie Underwood: The Next Chapter: Carrie Underwood appropriately taps into the art of telling tales on her latest album, Storyteller. 

A few of the tracks, she says, might be a little surprising even for longtime fans.

Cover Feature in Country Weekly to hit newstands - Country Weekly

Maverick Magazine

In their November/ December Bi/monthly magazine the UK publication have a Carrie Underwood Cover Feature titled “All Of Nothing Kinda Gal” (by Editor Laura Bethell)

It’s available in W.H.Smith High Street stores or online whsmith.co.uk

Preview it here:

Read Maverick November - December 2015
Publisher Software from YUDU

VIEW Full Screen

SCANS: Cover - P66 - P67 - P69

IN OTHER NEWS

(21 Oct 2015) Carrie Underwood has represented Almay as the global brand ambassador since she signed with them in January 2014. The 32-year-old looked picture perfect as she attended the Almay Fresh-Faced Beauty Day in New York City on Wednesday. Read more: Daily Mail

(21 Oct 2015) Carrie Underwood Among First Acts Announced as American Music Awards Performers which will air on ABC on November 22.  Selena Gomez and Australian pop/rockers 5 Seconds of Summer are the other two acts on the bill.

Nominees were announced last week, with Taylor Swift leading the way with six nods.